


Guppy Love

by xx_bittersweet_merlin



Series: founders era [9]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Lovecraftian Monster(s), M/M, MerMay, MerMay 2018, Mermaids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 18:57:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14817021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xx_bittersweet_merlin/pseuds/xx_bittersweet_merlin
Summary: (for mermay, just barely in time. a oneshot, but may or may not be added to)in which madara's a betta fish merman and hashirama is...hashirama. no one knows what he is, but he is highly skilled at slicing through ships that prey on mer in his neighborhood. madara, as usual, is just along for a good time and some teasing.





	Guppy Love

**Author's Note:**

> mer designs thought up w/help of byelawliet, god among humanity

He could feel the eyes on him. They were watching him, watching the light reflecting off his scales, glimmering different shades of cerise and mulberry. Silver, in the right sunbeam.

Madara smirked to himself and stretched out further on his favorite boulder. His scales’ stubborn tendency to act like a tetra fish was captivating, he supposed, but Hashirama’s fixation went beyond just their pretty colors and he knew it.

He gave a slow swish of his tail, feeling the eyes follow it, and his smirk widened. Hashirama was typically no pushover, but in moments like these Madara could get anything he wanted from him.

“Hmm,” he hummed, raising his chin to sit on his folded forearms, with his eyes still closed. Letting his voice dip into a low, easy tone, as if he was still halfway dozing, he flicked his tail again. “Hashirama.”

He opened one eye. A dark green face popped up over the edge of the boulder, yellow eyes wide in curiosity as the four antennae-like structures on its forehead twitched. “Yes?”

Madara tilted his head in a come-hither gesture, letting his smirk look like a smile. Hashirama glided up and over the edge and across the rock towards him, eyes still wide in anticipation, and he blinked when Madara raised a hand and motioned for him to come closer with his index finger. When he did it that rapidly, Madara could almost see all three pairs of his eyelids shuttering.

He floated closer, leaning down over him with even wider eyes, and Madara smiled sweetly. “Can you do me a favor?”

“What is it?” Hashirama blurted out, like one of those guppies who were too eager to please.

“Can you…” He motioned for Hashirama to come even closer, and he could feel the heat gathering in the other’s cheekbones as he lifted his face and murmured into his ear. “…stop interrupting my nap?”

Hashirama’s face crashed into the surface of the boulder as a dark aura of dejection surrounded him. “Sorry,” he mumbled, drifting away mournfully, all of the countless green eyes on his fins that people were too nervous to look at trained on the ocean floor. Madara snickered.

He settled back on his forearms and watched the other male drift away towards the large reef that sat right in the middle of their territory. The broad fins that grew from his waist area concealed much of what was underneath; Madara still wasn’t sure if they were more fins or eyes or something else. They were always hard to get a good look at even if he was looking directly at them.

He squinted at them, trying to differentiate between the shifting of the tentacle-like structures he knew were within and the other strange tissue, before giving up and letting his eyes drift up to the large ridge along Hashirama’s spine. There was an odd droop to his stance that made Madara frown. It seemed more than his usual pouting.

Perhaps he’d had an argument with his brother. He had seemed a bit subdued in his greeting earlier, though Madara had chalked it up to a late night considering he’d heard about three ships being sent into the reefs of the island nearby.

He lifted himself from his boulder and swam after him. He continued to drift quietly away, jumping and letting out a yelp when Madara popped up in front of him.

“Did you forget, Hashirama?” he asked, with a bit of a judgmental purr, letting his eyelids droop. He wondered faintly why Hashirama had one more pair than everyone else. Of course, things rarely made sense concerning Hashirama. “You _did_ invite me to that ship today.”

Hashirama, as expected, perked right up. “Oh, right!” he exclaimed, mouth drawing into a smile and showing off the rows of monstrously razor-edged teeth within. Madara’s own incisors were sharp enough to bite through most softer materials and make a dent in harder ones, but it did fascinate him to look at Hashirama’s maw. “You want to go now?”

“Obviously,” he stated with a roll of his eyes, coiling through the water in the direction of the old downed traveler’s ship he’d seen a few times from afar but hadn’t gone to investigate yet. It was on the edge of their territory, where more ships had been spotted recently, so they were all being choosy with where they spent their time. “Well? Are you coming?”

He reached back and snagged Hashirama’s hand, under the guise of yanking him into movement, knowing it would make the other male let out a happy noise he was probably trying to clamp down on. The suckers dotting Hashirama’s hand latched onto his skin and the scales mottled over his flesh, gently, though he knew they could leave large bruises if Hashirama wanted to.

He could feel Hashirama beaming behind him as he kept up the guise of pulling him towards the ship so he had an excuse to hold on. That ought to chase away his sour mood.

He paused when they’d crested a hill overlooking the crash site below, where a wooden human ship had settled partially buried in a mound of sand. The mast had been broken in half, the upper part missing, and there were several large holes in the side of the boat; it was obviously a bit old, seeing as seaweed had overgrown the thing.

He let go of Hashirama’s hand, as warm as it was in the water, and folded his arms. “What exactly were you hoping to find in there?” he drawled, a little curious, but mostly meaning to tease.

Hashirama started forward and turned over to smile at him, radiating something cheerful that contrasted greatly with his previous mood. “Anything!” he chirped, making Madara roll his eyes before following him.

The opening that had once been the door to below deck had been rotted away to a much larger gap, allowing them to slide through with ease. One side of the boat was canted towards the surface, allowing sunlight to stream in through the holes in the walls of the rooms along one side and into the hall, and Madara peered curiously into the first one he came across.

He supposed it must have been some sort of living chambers, or for recreation, at least, because there were old, eaten-away remnants of fabrics dotting the floor, some of them thicker in the way objects humans used for relaxation were. He sidled up to a table that had a skeleton wrapped in some of the remnants strewn across it, curiously poking at some of the leg bones with his claws. Legs were a strange ornament indeed.

Somewhere behind him, Hashirama let out a snort. “Hey, Madara,” he whispered. “Look at this.”

Madara turned around. He caught sight of an expanse of black and silver and magenta and felt an irrational rush of red-hot anger, striking out with his tail and sending the mirror Hashirama was holding across the room and crashing into the wall.

Hashirama snorted again and covered his mouth with a hand, eyes watering as he wheezed. “Hashirama!” Madara growled, scowling as his tail lashed about in agitation. “That’s not funny.”

“Yes it is!” Hashirama practically squeaked, laughing harder when Madara whacked his tail. He turned and disappeared through the doorway, taking a minute to wind his entire body through it, giggling his way down the hall.

 _Idiot_. Madara pressed his lips together, trying to ignore the angry flush he could feel turning his scales cherry red.  He could still hear Hashirama humming, something upbeat he’d probably heard from surface-dwellers, and felt a rash of embarrassment; at least making a bit of a fool of himself had seemed to keep his friend’s mood up. He could dance his way into getting Hashirama to do what he wanted but it was a little pitiful how far Madara would go just to see him smiling.

Sighing, he swam into the hall and towards the room Hashirama had headed towards, pausing as he peeked around the doorway. The humming was still there, but it was a bit more subdued as Hashirama hovered in front of a table, tail curled on the floor, poking at the variety of objects fortunate enough not to have broken down yet.

His expression was solemn. He didn’t look overtly depressed, but simply as if he had nothing to be happy about.

Madara frowned and pulled back from the doorway. Something was definitely bothering his friend, but he didn’t know how to bring it up, or if Hashirama wanted it to be brought up. He was usually very free with talking about things that made him unhappy.

He entered the room across the hall and looked around for something to cheer him up. Hashirama was always collecting little human baubles, as fascinated with the human world as he was, in the way a tourist might; he wasn’t all that interested in spending time up there with the surface-dwellers even though he liked to collect what they left behind.

He wasn’t as free and trigger-happy as Izuna was with it, though. Madara swore that his brother’s home was filled to the brim with random crap he’d collected. It was organized, but he was still a packrat. Hashirama tended to only take useful things.

His gaze fell on a comb floating in a half-broken bin on the floor, among a few disintegrating fabric objects, and he pulled it out with an inquisitive glance. It had held up well, carved out of something that looked like coral; he snorted as he turned towards the hall again, wondering at the surface dwellers’ ability to take or use fairly everything they came across.

Hashirama was still staring at the table when he swam back in, and barely looked up as Madara came up behind him. His hair was long- it reached his fins, at least, and Madara had no idea how he kept it free of debris to well.

He settled closer and gathered some of it from the back of Hashirama’s neck, making him jump. “Madara?” he asked, going to turn around; he stopped when he almost ran into Madara himself.

He shuddered as Madara raked the comb through his hair. “I’m not sure which one of us has more hair,” he commented, paying half attention as he combed it.

Hashirama’s cheekbones were darkening again, though Madara didn’t know what was causing it this time. “Um…yes.”

“I found this in the other room. You like these human things, don’t you?” Madara sniffed, as if he didn’t care much, withdrawing the comb and holding it out. Hashirama stared at him for a moment, looking a bit like he did every time Madara managed to will most of his scales black or silver when he was sunbathing, before jumping again and taking it from his grasp.

“Yes! Thank you, Madara.” He looked up at him with a smile that always managed to make Madara’s insides feel like jelly. “You’re so thoughtful.”

Madara returned the stare for a moment before huffing and turning back towards the door, the scales behind his ear flushing hot red. “Whatever,” he muttered, sulking a bit when he heard Hashirama chuckle. He disliked being reminded that he was being a hypocrite whenever he called Hashirama predictable.

He was still mildly pouting when he reached the room at the end of the hall. There was quite a lot of junk within, strewn across the floor and the remains of the furniture, and it took a minute or two to carefully pick his way through it.

He paused, floating over a rusted-over hunk of metal, and raised an eyebrow at the thing’s odd appearance. There were a few windows in it, and a large hole near the bottom- he was pretty sure the humans used such things to go underwater where they didn’t belong.

He heard Hashirama’s tail rake past the wall outside as he approached Madara and the room he was in. Smirking, he lifted the helmet from the floor, easily hefting its weight, and swam over to the space just beside the door, setting the helmet over his head and waiting.

Hashirama slithered into the room, expression calm but inquiring. Madara very much wanted to smirk, but instead wiped his expression empty and tried to will the scales on his cheekbones and forehead to dim, dropping his tone to something low and emotionless.

“Hashirama.”

Hashirama jumped and spun. He let out a shriek when he saw him, flailing across the floor and slamming into a table with his fins, making it collapse into a deteriorating heap and leaving a hole in the wall where his tail tore through it. “Madara!”

Madara guffawed as he sunk down. He shimmied out of the helmet and tossed it aside, cackling at the pout now on Hashirama’s lips. “What’s the matter, Hashirama? Megalodons don’t scare you, but little helmets do?”

“You’re mean,” Hashirama complained as he swam towards a hole in the boat, swiping at some of the more sensitive scales on his caudal tail. The excessive amount of fins feathered around it twitched.

“And you’re five,” Madara shot back as he disappeared outside, taking a parting shot at the other’s pouting as he left.

He swam back up the hill, though it was a different section than they’d come down. Hashirama didn’t immediately emerge after him, so he supposed he must have been checking to make sure there weren’t any creatures left in the ship; sometimes they wandered in and became stuck one way or another. In the last ship he’d nosed around in, he’d found an adolescent dolphin stuck in some sort of metal cage the humans had been carrying on the boat. Madara didn’t know why they insisted on caging everything they wanted to interact with.

A glint of light caught his eye. He turned and squinted, waiting for a bit of sand to settle so he could get a glimpse of what had been reflecting sunlight.

He chuckled when he found a tiny guppy nosing at something shiny in the sand, swimming around to different angles to poke at it. It was barely three inches long, quite large for its kind, but still tiny nonetheless.

“Find something interesting?” he hummed, gliding up behind it. It turned and blinked at him with large, guileless eyes, not understanding his words but understanding his intent.

A bit curious himself, he brushed away the sand covering what it had been prodding at and squinted in confusion as he pulled it up. It looked to be a strange sort of rock, a bright and iridescent white, attached to a chunk of metal keeping it weighted down. There was an odd cord extending from the weight down into the sand.

Sand exploded around him as a net sprung from the ocean surface. He swore and whirled around, but it had already encircled him, large enough to entrap his whole body as its four corners locked together above him, effectively erasing any opening large enough to swim out of. The cord was attached to the top, and he could see it leading off into the water space above him now that it was free from being buried in the sand.

A heated rush of anger flowed through him. He lashed his tail about, trying to free it of the contraption, but it only seemed to make the net grow tighter and more restrictive. The guppy floundered against his chest, startled, and he folded a hand over it before lashing out with his claws, trying to tear the netting. The material was thick and made an odd whining noise when he tried to rip it, unyielding to his efforts.

A shadow fell over him. Madara glanced up and scowled when he saw the shape of a boat overhead, having emerged from behind a reef nearby, following the cord as it was reeled in and the net began to rise.

He lashed about again, but the net only tightened, and he swore again when it occurred to him it must have been the same type that Tobirama had gotten caught in the month before, something new the surface-dwellers had contrived to deal with the beasts shredding their nets. It had been luck, Mito had told him, that she and Toka had been around to down the relatively small ship and he hadn’t been alone. They’d still had to go fetch Hashirama to tear through the material.

“Hashirama!” he howled, but he hardly needed to. Something green and dark and _very large_ coiled around the net in the water, and the next thing he knew, something had sliced through it and left it in tatters around him.

“They never learn,” Hashirama muttered, directly beside him, and Madara noted his proximity with a start. The other merman’s hands were on his elbows, pressing him back into the sand as he looked his tail over, and the claws on said hands suddenly looked more like monstrous talons. There was a stormy look in his eyes, yellow all over, as he turned, sporting ridges on his arms that Madara felt for some reason had been there before, while the one on his back had grown to look more like a shark’s ominous telltale fin.

He lashed out through the water, moving with an unfamiliar speed, and the water around the boat overhead darkened with ink. Madara saw Hashirama’s tail- it seemed much longer than usual- beating against the boat’s underbelly, tearing through it, surrounded by long arms and eyes whipping about with brutal speed in a way that seemed a little horrifying-

He realized he was staring at the sand several moments later. He didn’t know when he’d looked away, but when he looked up the boat was veering unsteadily towards the reef, taking on water, and it startled him out of his daze.

He opened his hand and placed the guppy near the ocean floor. “Stay out of trouble,” he ordered, and it blinked uncomprehendingly at him a few times before he took off.

He swam up to where he could see Hashirama’s form hovering and moved alongside him towards the surface. There was shouting on the air when he emerged, breathing in his first gulp of air in a long while, and he took a moment to acclimate himself as Hashirama moved towards the portion of the reef that extended over the water. It was nothing more than a small series of pseudo islands, a series that the humans were now pulling themselves onto.

Hashirama swam up to the edge and lifted himself up, so they could see the agitated ridges along his sides, and Madara decided to drift in the water a few yards away to wait for the show to start.

“You there,” he called to one of the men- the captain, probably, since he had on the silly outfit Madara usually saw captains in. They were all still stumbling around, pouring water out of their boots, crying to each other about the horrible monster that had attacked them. Madara snickered to himself as Hashirama went on. “These waters are under my protection. You’re to leave them at once.”

The man in charge looked up and went absolutely wan when he spotted Hashirama. The other men let out dismayed cries at his visage, and Madara snickered harder, thinking over the weak constitution of surface-dwellers. Hashirama was terrifying, he knew, but that just made him more appealing.

“Kill the beast!” one of them shouted, pointing, just like Madara had been anticipating, and Hashirama let out a deep sigh.

Madara dove under the surface and took off with a snap of his tail. He darted in between part of the reef, zipping straight into one of the pools in between the islands the surface made, and lunged up just as two of the crew were stumbling around looking for weapons. He seized them by the ankles and yanked, reveling in the delightful screams they let out, bringing them both underwater as they struggled.

He sliced the throat of one and easily snapped the neck of the other, letting them drift towards the bottom of the pool, and slithered back out. There was screaming overhead, no doubt caused by their idiotic attempts to attack a creature that could tear through metal with his fins, and he cackled to himself a bit as he circled around to where he could hear one trying to run to the other end of the platform.

There had been roughly fourteen men on the boat, assuming some of them hadn’t drowned before reaching the reef, and when he emerged from killing four more there were only three left. They were huddled in the center of their platform, trying in vain to keep where Hashirama wouldn’t be able to reach, and Madara chuckled to himself again as he drifted back around.

“Where’d the other one go?” he heard one cry, sounding as if he was about to shiver right out of his boots.

Another nudged the third. “Go check!”

“No! I’m not going near the water!”

“I can’t see either of them! We can’t aim if we don’t know where they are!”

Gulping, the quivering man slowly edged nearer to one of the ends, peering into the water with terror written across his face.

“Not so intimidating without that contraption on that ship of yours, are you?” Madara called in amusement, throwing his voice to the other end. The unsuspecting fool whirled around to look for it and didn’t see Madara lunging out of the water until he’d sunk his claws into the meat of his chest and taken him shrieking to the floor. The scream turned into a watery gurgle as Madara cut his throat, half laying on a piece of coral.

The sound of wood and metal grinding together caught his attention. He jerked his head around and froze when he spotted the last two men holding some device they’d dragged from a larger base off the ship, and though it didn’t look familiar, the spear- or, rather, harpoon- it was cocking did. His cousin had been speared by one once, and he’d swum a little crooked ever since.

Hashirama burst out of the water and draped himself over him as the harpoon fired. Madara startled and yelped when it rammed into his shoulder, making the other man wince a bit. The harpoon clattered harmlessly to the coral as the humans stared in horror at the unbroken skin of Hashirama’s back.

He turned and cast them an annoyed glance, seizing the spear with one of his tentacles and throwing it with far more force than the machine had managed. It skewered them both in one go, and the gun dropped to the ground with a thud as they fell over together.

Madara stared at the carnage around them with a blank expression, wondering if this happened every time Hashirama tried diplomacy, and patted Hashirama’s shoulder when something occurred to him. He looked down at Madara with a raised eyebrow, still leaning over him. “You know what would make a good souvenir? That one’s head.”

Hashirama sighed.

* * *

 

Now that there were no murderous humans looking to catch a fish they thought was pretty enough to sell, Madara was back to square one. As they swam through the reefs they both called home, nearing the intersection they parted ways at, he gnawed on his lower lip as he thought of how to broach the topic of Hashirama’s low mood.

He was back to looking vaguely melancholy as they meandered forward under an archway bathed in soft green light, dotted with strange vegetation and flowers that pulsated with odd light and seemed to crop up anywhere Hashirama himself went. He always seemed a bit more relaxed around his plants, so Madara chose that spot to pause, making his friend draw up in surprise after it took him a moment to notice.

“Madara?” he asked as he turned, tail resting on the sand below. It still seemed a bit longer than usual. Madara wasn’t going to mention it. “What’s wrong?”

“Spill it,” Madara ordered, deciding to be blunt as he folded his arms. A crease formed in Hashirama’s brow.

“Spill what?”

“What’s upsetting you,” he said with a vague hand gesture to Hashirama’s direction. He let out a dainty sniff and closed his eyes, tilting his chin up, and tried to sound uncaring. “I _have_ noticed it all day. Something’s making you be in a weird mood. Now just tell me instead of sulking.”

Hashirama squinted at him for a moment before realization spread across his face. “Oh,” he said with a breathless laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. He smiled with some amount of sheepishness. “It’s nothing. Tobi’s just been in a weird mood lately. I think it’s some type of phase,” he said with a sigh, shoulders slumping. “He keeps tying his lure to his head when he goes out. I’m afraid he thinks people think it looks weird.”

Madara stared at him without saying a word. The entire day, he’d thought something serious had been the matter when all it was, was Tobirama tying his _lure_ to his _head_. He placed a weary hand over his eyes and sighed.

“Hashirama, doesn’t your brother skulk around a lot?”

“Hm?” Hashirama glanced up at him and tilted his head before nodding. “Oh, yes, he likes to spy around.”

“Haven’t you considered that maybe he just doesn’t want to be noticed? It is rather…eye-catching.”

Hashirama paused. His expression was considering for several moments before it began to flush with embarrassment. “…oh, yes, that does make sense,” he murmured, making Madara drag the hand down his face. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Madara murmured. He looked back up and floated there for a moment, staring at Hashirama’s face, at his familiar red markings and the goofy lilt to his smile that contrasted so greatly with the terror he’d inspired earlier that day.

He’d never actually gotten _caught_ in a net before, and it occurred to him after the fact it was a little bit panic inducing. Teasing was fun, but if he ended up dying pitifully on some human’s boat before getting laid, he would haunt _himself_.

“Madara?” Hashirama was staring at him, looking a bit puzzled at his silence, and Madara decided to do it before he chickened out.

He seized Hashirama’s shoulders and pulled himself close, plastering their lips together and watching through half-lidded eyes as Hashirama’s own went wide with shock. Madara let himself have a single lick of the other man’s frozen bottom lip before he pulled back, taking in his stunned countenance gleefully, and put on as sultry a smile as he could manage.

“See you tomorrow, Hashirama,” he whispered into one pointed ear, watching it shiver before he turned and swam away towards his home. Hashirama lingered in the cave behind, watching him go until he was out of sight.

* * *

 

He could feel the eyes on him again. However many Hashirama had, they were all focused on him as he sunbathed, like many mornings, but they were much more restless this time. Madara could tell, because he could hear rocks and pieces of coral shifting around as Hashirama fidgeted in the reef by his boulder.

Smugly, he stretched out further, feeling the eyes follow the shifting of the muscles in his back. He cracked open one eye and turned his head, spotting Hashirama’s eyes peeking over the edge, and smirked. “Hashirama?”

Hashirama’s head bobbed up. “Yes?” he asked, eyes wide with hopeful excitement. He’d already begun to drift closer, and Madara hadn’t even called him over yet.

Smirk widening, he tilted his head in a come-hither gesture. Hashirama leaned down as if to whisper to him. “Can you do me a favor?”

Hashirama’s face twisted with trepidation. “Yes?” he asked, looking like he was about to wince.

If Madara’s smirk grew any wider, it would fall right off his face. He reached up and brushed his hand through Hashirama’s hair, folding it around to cup the back of his head, pressing on it with clear intent. “Interrupt my nap.”

Hashirama’s eyes lit up. Madara pulled him down and let their mouths meet again, humming in amusement as Hashirama pulled him up from the boulder so they could drift freely. His body felt like it was humming with anticipation that showed itself in his strength as he wrapped his arms around Madara’s torso, coiling their tails together and letting his tentacles curl around Madara’s form.

His tongue slithered into Madara’s mouth, long and forked and almost sharp, and Madara was hesitant to stick his own into Hashirama’s razor-edged jaws without caution but was more than happy to float there moaning as Hashirama licked into his mouth.

He pulled away and moved his tongue to Madara’s ear, licking long stripes up his neck and scales as he tilted his head back and groaned. Both his skin and scales flushed a hot pink when it curled around the shell of his ear, winding around it completely and still able to dip into it and tickle his lobe and canal.

Something nudging his shoulder caught his attention. Madara straightened, turning as much as he could manage, and Hashirama paused at his loss of focus. “What is i-?”

“Ah,” Madara interrupted, smiling as he pulled a few inches away. He reached back and cupped his hand around a familiar little guppy, bringing it into the space between them and grinning as innocently as he could manage as Hashirama furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “It seems I have to entertain a friend, if you don’t mind.”

“Huh-?” Hashirama gaped as he slithered out of his hold, swimming away with a cheerful tune on his throat, and stared open-mouthed as Madara headed for the cave system. “W- y- Madara!” he called, or whined, more accurately, hurriedly swimming after him. “Madara, you’re ignoring me for a _guppy fish_?”

“Patience, Hashirama.”

“You’re evil.”

“And you’re five.”


End file.
